A Cage Full of Heroes
by San Antonio Rose
Summary: The Heroes have had tough assignments before. They've done the impossible time and again. But this unexpected job might be the toughest of all: keeping Sam and Dean Winchester alive. (Crossed Swords AU, sequel to "Jeep Jockey Jumper," Hogan's Heroes/Supernatural, spoilers for SPN Season 7; nominated for Best Crossover in the 2013 Papa Bear Awards!)
1. You're In The Army Now

A/N: This story is part of my Crossed Swords Alternate Multiverse and a sequel to "Jeep Jockey Jumper." You don't need to have read the other stories to understand this one, but there are a few references to the earlier adventures here and there. This story is complete in four chapters; I'll be posting one chapter a day. SPN spoilers through mid-Season 7.

* * *

A Cage Full of Heroes  
By San Antonio Rose

Chapter 1  
You're In the Army Now

Dean Winchester swore by all that was holy that he would kill this Trickster.

It wasn't Gabriel or even the real Loki—unfortunately—but when they'd gone to it for help against the Leviathans, it had decided to take a page out of the rebel archangel's book and stick them back in TVLand with the same rules for reasons known only to itself. And apparently the creep's cable lineup included some show about Air Force POWs in WWII because Dean and Sam had suddenly found themselves in front of a burning B-17 and surrounded by Germans. Sam, who just as suddenly had a haircut that would pass for regulation and sideburns that weren't muttonchops, had shot him a look that said _Play along_, so they surrendered. Now they were at some kind of processing center talking to a Nazi officer who barely spoke English. They had managed to inform each other of the surname and rank on their bomber jackets in the truck before being shut up by the guard, which came in very handy now.

"_Ihre Name, Herr Hauptmann?_" asked the German.

Dean really wanted to give a fake name, but he knew the jacket would give him away. And it wasn't like he existed in this show anyway. "Winchester, Dean, Captain, United States Army Air Force, 1121983."

The German duly wrote everything down and turned to Sam. "_Herr Feldwebel?_"

"Winchester, Samuel, Sergeant, United States Army Air Force, 8675309."

"... _fünf-drei-null-neun_." The German nodded as he finished writing and picked up the phone. "_Geben Sie mir Luftstalag Dreizehn, bitte._"

Though Sam swiftly hid his surprise, Dean knew his brother too well to miss it. "What?" he whispered.

"I know where we are," Sam whispered back, then added just loud enough for the Germans to hear, "They say Stalag 13 is the toughest POW camp in all of Germany. No escapes. That Col. Klink is a brute."

"Silence!" snapped the officer.

Dean blinked—_that_ Klink? He'd never watched _Hogan's Heroes_, but he did watch _The Simpsons_ enough to have seen the episode with Klink, the uptight German bungler who supposedly commanded Stalag 13, as Homer's guardian angel. And he knew that the camp, though none of the Germans realized it, was actually run by Col. Robert Hogan, alias Papa Bear, and his international team of prisoners-turned-spies as a processing point for escapees from other camps, a rescue center for downed airmen, and a base for sabotage and espionage. He thought he remembered something about a tunnel network, a hidden radio, a guard whose catchphrase was "I see _NO-THINK!_"...

Sam just nodded solemnly, confirming Dean's train of thought. Awesome.

The officer hung up the phone and barked an order, and as the guards herded the Winchesters back into the transport truck, it was all Dean could do to keep from laughing hysterically.

He still hated Tricksters, but this was a good one.

* * *

"Better set another place for dinner, LeBeau," Sgt. James "Kinch" Kinchloe stated as he walked into Barracks 2 at Stalag 13. "New prisoner just arrived."

"Two of 'em," Sgt. Andrew Carter corrected, following Kinch inside. "Both Americans. Just going into Klink's office now."

Hogan, who was pondering a radio message that had just been delivered to him, heard them and came out of his office. "Kinch, Carter, listen in on the coffee pot. I'll head over to Klink's."

"Right, Colonel," Kinch nodded, and the two American sergeants went into Hogan's office.

"Smells good, LeBeau," Hogan remarked on his way out the door. "Bouillabaisse?"

"_Oui_," nodded Cpl. Louis LeBeau. "And a good thing, too—as cold as it is, I bet those new prisoners will want some hot soup."

Hogan grinned; if one quality stood out about his French teammate more than his good cooking and his quick temper, it was his tendency to be a mother hen. "Likely."

He closed the door behind him and hurried across the compound to Klink's office, arriving in the outer office just in time to hear an American baritone repeating his name, rank, and an unusual-sounding serial number. Hilda, even though she was focused intently on her paperwork, was still blushing, so one or both men must be quite good-looking. Hogan gave her a peck on the cheek.

Her blush deepened a little, but she smiled at him. "_Guten Tag_, Col. Hogan."

"New prisoners?"

"In there." She nodded at Klink's office door, which stood open.

Hogan kissed Hilda again and walked straight in to stand beside the sergeant who, though he slouched, was even taller than Kinch. Capt. Winchester, who had just finished speaking, looked around at him and then up at the sergeant, and _something_ passed between them before the captain looked back at him and acknowledged him with a nod, a "Colonel," and a look that said _We need to talk_.

"Sir," the sergeant nodded down at him.

"Hi," Hogan replied, returning the nod to both men. "Col. Hogan. Welcome to Shangri-La."

"Col. Hogan," Klink said, "Capt. Dean Winchester, and this is..." He paused, waiting for the sergeant.

"Winchester, Sam, Sergeant, United States Army Air Force, 8675309."

"Are you two related?" Klink asked curiously as he wrote down Sgt. Winchester's information.

"Brothers," replied Capt. Winchester reluctantly.

And that was odd, though it explained the silent communication. How did two brothers end up in the same _squadron_, never mind on the same bomber crew? Regulations were supposed to prevent that sort of thing these days. They seemed a little old for their ranks, too, probably late 20s or early 30s.

Klink simply nodded in understanding. "Now, what is your flying group and where are you stationed?"

"Don't answer that," Hogan warned.

"_Christo_," the brothers chorused, their faces unreadable as they stared at Klink.

Oh, yeah. Something was definitely out of the ordinary here. No hobbits or spaceships, but _that_ was not a normal response. Nor was their barely perceptible relaxation when Klink turned a puzzled frown on Hogan.

"Whaaat?" said Klink.

"Probably a concussion," Hogan said easily.

The brothers had a sudden coughing fit.

"See, Kommandant? These men aren't well. Let me take 'em back to the barracks and let Wilson check 'em over."

Klink looked worried. "I don't know, Hogan. If these men are contagious..."

Capt. Winchester cleared his throat and shook his head. "Allergies."

Sgt. Winchester coughed once more for emphasis. "My throat's still raw from all that smoke," he croaked.

Klink pondered a moment, then nodded. "All right. As long as Sgt. Wilson is sure they're not contagious, we will put them in your barracks and they will be your responsibility."

"Yes, sir." Hogan saluted sloppily. "C'mon, fellas."

With much throat-clearing and coughing and mutual back pounding, the Winchesters followed Hogan out of the office and across to Barracks 2. LeBeau met them at the door with cups of water, which they accepted with gratitude.

"Now _what_ was so funny back there?" Hogan demanded.

"No offense, Colonel, but you were," Capt. Winchester grinned.

When a long look got nothing more out of the kid, Hogan sighed. "All right. Normally, as a commissioned officer, you'd bunk with me, but I get the feeling you'd rather stay with your brother." He pointed toward the bunk across the room from the tunnel entrance. "Those beds are free."

The captain nodded. "Got it. Thanks, Colonel."

"Is that coffee?" Sgt. Winchester asked hopefully, looking toward the hot plate on the table that held the useable coffee pot while the bouillabaisse simmered on the wood-burning stove.

"_Oui_," LeBeau nodded and poured him a cup.

Sgt. Winchester took a sip and groaned in pleasure.

"_Dude_," said his brother pointedly, using a word Hogan had only ever heard from the mouth of John Sheppard.

"Shut up. My throat _does_ hurt."

"You don't have to..."

"My office, both of you," Hogan ordered before the conversation could get crude. "Kinch, Carter, come wait out here. LeBeau, go get Wilson and find Newkirk."

"_Oui, Colonel_," LeBeau nodded and hurried off while the brothers called each other names under their breath and Kinch and Carter came back into the main room.

Hogan herded the Winchesters into his office, closed the door, and blocked it. "Explain yourselves."

The brothers looked at each other, and Capt. Winchester sighed. "Where should I start?"

"Your real names would be nice."

"I'm Dean Winchester. This is my brother Sam. But we're not really in the Air Force."

"Yeah, I gathered that. I also gather you're not from this time period, possibly not even from this reality."

The Winchesters frowned at each other. "How do you know?" Capt.—_Dean_—asked, turning his frown on Hogan.

"Experience." Hogan slid his hunting knife out of its hiding place under his mattress and handed it to Dean. "That was given to me personally by an Elf."

"Did this Elf have a name?" Sam asked, setting his coffee cup on Hogan's desk as Dean slid the knife out of its sheath.

"He did, actually. Legolas Thranduilion."

Both brothers looked at him sharply, then at each other, then at the knife.

"Those are Tolkien's runes," Sam murmured. "And that... that's definitely Sindarin—I can't read it, but I recognize a word or two."

"The Trickster's not _that_ good," Dean murmured back.

Hogan frowned and took the knife back. "The Trickster?"

Another shared look and a nod, and Dean took a deep breath. "It's a demigod who likes to..."

"_Mess_ with people," Sam interrupted with a pointed look at Dean, and Hogan suspected he'd realized that their usual vocabulary was too obscene for this setting.

Dean glared at Sam but continued, "I dunno how we got crosswise with the... idjit, but he's been playin' some stupid game with us—we have to live through twenty-four hours of him puttin' us in a bunch of different TV shows. We play our roles, we survive."

"Um, television is... well, it's like movies, only broadcast like radio, but in a different frequency range," Sam explained.

Hogan nodded. "I can picture that. Thanks. And how do you know so much about demigods?"

"We're hunters," Dean replied. "We mostly hunt supernatural creatures—ghosts, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, demons, you name it. It's kind of the family business."

"Only we don't get paid," Sam added as if by habit.

"So that scene in the office," Hogan said, putting the pieces together. "You were testing Klink."

Dean turned to Sam in surprise. "He's quick."

"That's why I'm a colonel," Hogan quipped.

Sam frowned and crossed his arms. "Something's not right, though, Dean. I mean, yeah, everything else we've been through so far has been real in a sense, but the 'real' Col. Hogan shouldn't know anything about _Lord of the Rings_. I don't think he's the Trickster, though he is _a_ trickster..."

"Well, thanks," Hogan remarked dryly.

Sam ignored him. "But we ought to be hearing a laugh track, at least—and have you noticed that in all the shows we've been through, the series regulars have _either_ already known who we are to some degree _or_ refused to accept that we weren't the characters they thought we were?"

Dean looked thoughtfully at Hogan as he ticked something off on his fingers, then turned back to Sam and apparently censored himself twice. "We're in an alternate universe."

Sam nodded. "That's my guess."

"How is that possible? Tricksters don't have that kind of power, and we know what it takes even for an angel to open a portal."

Sam shrugged. "Maybe we slipped through a crack... y'know, like in the Narnia books. Or maybe someone higher up decided we need a break."

"Sammy, in case you forgot, we have no friends left Upstairs. Unless Ash staged a coup or something."

"God's still out there."

"God _abandoned_ us, dude. Slammed the door in our faces when we asked for help with the Apocalypse, wouldn't even show to stop Cas from popping Purgatory. Why the hell would he intervene now?"

"Maybe it wasn't God from our universe. Other worlds can't all be like that one Balthazar threw us into, can they?"

As Dean failed to come up with a response to that, Hogan interrupted, "Did you say the _Apocalypse?_"

Both brothers suddenly looked incredibly guilty. "It's a long story," Dean replied in a low voice.

Just then someone knocked on the door. "It's Kinch, Colonel," said his black chief of staff from the other side. "Wilson's here."

Hogan nodded to the Winchesters and opened the door to see that Wilson was getting a cup of coffee from LeBeau. Perfect. "Sgt. Wilson!" he called, loudly enough that everyone in the outer room could hear. "I promised Klink I'd have you give our visitors the once-over."

The barracks stilled for a split second as the other prisoners processed the code word. Hogan hoped the pause was less obvious to the brothers.

Then Wilson nodded. "Sure thing, Colonel. Anything in particular?"

Hogan shrugged. "Colds, mainly, and smoke inhalation."

"You got it, sir. Thanks, LeBeau," Wilson added with a smile and a slight raise of the coffee mug before heading into the office.

Hogan introduced the Winchesters to the medic before leaving the office, closing the door behind him, and heading over to the main table. "Ah, fellas?" he began, looking at his four teammates. As soon as he had their attention, he continued, "Need to talk to you a minute about this message Baker brought me a few minutes ago."

Olson immediately went to the door to keep watch.

"What is it, _Colonel_?" LeBeau asked. "Something wrong with our visitors?"

"Not exactly wrong," Hogan admitted before summarizing the interview for his men. "But the timing is curious," he continued, pulling Baker's message out of his pocket. "This just came in from Lily Frankel: 'Urgent, repeat, urgent: Gestapo suspicions piqued again by Saturday's ammo dump explosion. Underground ordered to halt all activity—suspect trap about to be set for Stalag 13. Do not, repeat, do not send men or information out of camp until further notice. Have notified London. Good luck.'"

A collective sigh went up from the group.

"You're sure there's no reason to suspect our new lads, Colonel?" asked RAF Cpl. Peter Newkirk.

Hogan nodded. "They're on the level. No German alive today would call another German 'dude' or talk about that Narnia story Beckett mentioned once, and they knew far too much about Tolkien just on the basis of Legolas' name to be spies. Even though London won't have anything on them, I think we can trust them. But they kept talking about this spirit called the Trickster who probably sent them here. They don't seem to think he's actually in this reality at the moment, but if the Gestapo is setting a trap..."

Carter muttered something uncomplimentary about Coyote in Sioux.

"How _do_ we play it, then, Colonel?" Kinch asked.

"I dunno," Hogan sighed. "We can't be sure of anything until the Gestapo makes a move. But Lily's right about one thing. As of now, all activity comes to a halt. The only people I want down in the tunnel for any reason are Kinch and Baker. No outgoing calls, no outgoing radio messages—we're not gonna wait for a radio detector truck this time. And I'll see if the Winchesters know of a way to keep the Trickster from getting into the camp if he does show up. Carter, Newkirk, pass the word."

Carter and Newkirk nodded and left, and LeBeau went back to work on the bouillabaisse. All three had just finished their assigned tasks when the office door opened and the Winchesters came out.

"Anything wrong, Wilson?" Hogan asked.

Wilson shrugged. "Nothing contagious, if that's what you mean. Can I talk to you a minute, sir?"

Hogan nodded. "Sure. Winchester," he added, looking at Dean, "you can have my seat for the moment."

Dean nodded once. "Yes, sir. Thank you."

Once he was in the office with the door shut, Hogan looked at Wilson expectantly. "Well?"

Wilson smiled a little. "If I didn't already know they were visitors, the scars and tattoos woulda raised some questions. They've got matching tattoos on their chests—kind of looks like some native design except for the pentangle in the middle. The sergeant's got a few nasty scars: one on his hand where it looks like he fell on a broken jar or something, couple on his wrists that look like someone tried to make him bleed to death, and one on his back that looks like someone tried to sever his spinal cord. No idea how he survived that one. The captain's got one on his left shoulder that's shaped like a handprint. And they've both got a couple of round ones smack over their center of mass—could be shotgun wounds if they weren't still breathing."

"_Huh_."

"That's not what worries me."

"Really?"

"Both of 'em flinched when my hands got too close to their belts, like... well."

Hogan nodded. He could fill in that blank for himself perfectly well; he'd known a couple of cadets at West Point who'd gotten drunk enough one weekend to admit that they'd been sexually abused. No one ever talked about it again, but Hogan had been aware of the signs after that.

"The sergeant kind of blanked out for a moment while I was checking on the captain, staring off at something that wasn't there. And then he started rubbing that scar on his hand—really pushing his thumb into it, probably hard enough to hurt. The captain called him by name a couple of times, and he snapped out of it. I'm no psychiatrist, but I'd put money on his having some kind of trauma-related hallucinations."

Hogan sighed. "Anything else?"

"I smelled whiskey on the captain's breath."

Hogan frowned. "He doesn't act drunk."

Wilson nodded. "I know. That's a bad sign. And since the last cave-in took out our wine cellar, my guess is that he's gonna start going into serious withdrawal before too many days. I can cover it as the flu, since we've all had that this winter, but..."

Hogan sighed again. "Sounds like they've had a rough time."

"You know the old saying, sir, but we've only been through war. _Those_ boys have been through hell."

_How literally, I wonder_, Hogan thought as he nodded. "Thanks, Wilson."

Dean was begging LeBeau for a second helping of bouillabaisse when Wilson and Hogan came out of the office, and across the table Sam was shooting his brother a look of amused bewilderment while Kinch and Newkirk were clearly trying hard not to laugh. Carter, on the other hand, was concentrating intently on something he was making with what looked like a piece of string and thus wasn't paying attention to any of them. Wilson took his leave and went to make his report to Klink, and Hogan sat down beside Dean.

"Enjoying the food that much?" he asked.

Sam snorted. "Dean will eat anything that's not a vegetable."

"Dude, shut up," Dean shot back. "Lettuce, tomatoes, and onions are fine when they're on bacon cheeseburgers. Don't get me started on what _you_ eat."

Sam rolled his eyes and ate another spoonful of soup.

LeBeau served Hogan and himself and set another serving aside to keep warm on the hotplate for Carter before granting Dean's seconds. "Have you ever had bouillabaisse before?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, couple of times when I was working a job in New Orleans—man. That was a lifetime ago. It was just diner food, though; not sure I've ever had a meal prepared by a real French chef before. Have you, College Boy?"

Sam shook his head. "No, Jess... Jess was more into Asian, Greek, Lebanese." And he set his spoon in his bowl for a moment while he pressed his thumb into his left palm.

Dean's face fell. "Sammy? Sammy, hey, I'm sorry..."

Sam took a deep breath, met Dean's eyes, and shook his head. "No, it—it's okay, Dean, honest. I'm fine."

"You sure?"

Sam nodded and went back to work on his soup. Unsure what to say, so did Hogan, and everyone else did likewise (except Carter, who was still working on whatever it was).

After a moment, Dean thought of something mid-bite and held up a finger while he swallowed. "Colonel, couple of things I forgot to ask. First, what day is it?" Dean asked.

"January 15, 1945," Kinch answered.

Dean looked at Sam, who shrugged. Then he looked back at Hogan. "Second, to make sure this isn't a working vacation, do you mind if we... take some precautions?"

Hogan shrugged. "Go ahead. We'll tell Schultz you're superstitious. And if you know some way to keep the Trickster out, so much the better."

Sam frowned. "I don't think it's likely that he'll be able to follow us here; like we said, your average Trickster doesn't have the power to actually cross realities. Loki probably did, but... in our reality, he's dead."

Dean sighed and shook his head a little. "Weird as it sounds, I actually miss the guy."

"Yeah," Sam agreed quietly. "Me, too." Then he shuddered—hard.

Dean just about jumped over the table. "Sam?"

"N—Dean, I'm okay, I'm not—I'm fine, honest." Sam looked over at Kinch, almost desperately. "Please tell me you guys have some kind of PT every day."

Rattled, Kinch cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. We can put you guys on work details, too, if you want... KP, motor pool..."

Dean perked up. "Motor pool? Like, mechanic work?"

"Yeah! You a mechanic?"

"Well, not professionally. Dad was, though, and he taught me everything he knew."

Sam grinned suddenly, but it wasn't the kind of grin that came with a psychotic break; he looked downright proud. "Dean's rebuilt our car from the frame up twice now. He's awesome."

Dean ducked his head a little in embarrassment, but he couldn't keep from grinning back at his brother.

Kinch looked at Hogan. "What do you think, Colonel?"

Hogan shrugged. "Sounds like a good fit to me. And Sam, we can partner you with Newkirk and LeBeau on clean-up detail—nothing dangerous, but it'll keep you moving most of the day. If this is anything like what happened with the hobbits, you'll only be here a few days, but it would be a good idea for you to be on work details just to keep the Germans from getting suspicious."

The brothers looked at each other again, and something—relief, perhaps, or maybe hope—dawned on both faces.

"Colonel, thank you," Sam replied sincerely. "Not just for putting us up—for understanding."

"This time last year, I might not have," Hogan stated matter-of-factly. "Now we've dealt with too much weirdness of our own _not_ to understand. I'm just sorry it's not the Riviera; sounds like you guys need a real rest."

"As bad as it is, Colonel, it beats Hell," Dean returned quietly. "And I mean that literally."

And there it was. Hogan decided not to push the question, but he had that much of an answer, and it explained a lot. Instead, he turned to the bunk behind him. "Carter, aren't you gonna eat?"

"In a minute, sir," came the distracted reply. "Can't stop or I'll lose the tension." Carter slid a bead onto the string and kept going.

Newkirk finished his soup and looked over at Dean. "A right car bug, eh, Captain?"

Dean grinned. "You could say that."

"What do you drive?"

"It's a Chevy, but it's not a model you'd have heard of."

"Why not?"

"Impala won't come out until '58."

"What would they have in the UK now?" Sam asked, frowning. "Standard Six?"

Dean nodded. "Standard Six—most of the other new lines since the '20s have been replaced or suspended because of the war. And the Standard Six is a good car, don't get me wrong, but my baby's got a V8."

"And lousy mileage."

"Dude, do _not_ get me started on that plastic piece of garbage you drove for a year. Thing _dinged_ at you if you didn't put your seatbelt on," Dean confided to Newkirk with clear disdain. "But I didn't have to put up with it long. Two guys fell out a fifth-floor window onto it, totaled it."

Hogan glanced around the room to see varying levels of shock on the faces of the other men in the barracks. He couldn't help smiling into his coffee.

"Wait," said Mills, leaning forward on his bunk. "They fell _five stories_ and damaged the _car_?"

"I still don't quite understand that one myself," Sam mused. "I mean, they were angels—you'd think they'd remember to _fly_."

Both the excited chatter and the incredulous questions provoked by that pronouncement lasted until roll call, resumed as soon as roll call was over, and continued until Hogan shut it down a few minutes before lights out. He might have done so sooner, but the Winchesters seemed to be enjoying the attention, and their answers helped put to rest any lingering suspicions that they might in fact be Gestapo plants. Himmler might be an occultist, but no one in the SS would so casually admit to the kinds of things these men knew and had killed, nor would he have laughed at a question Potowsky threw out in _Yiddish_, never mind answering in the same language as easily as Dean did.

The joy went out of both brothers' faces when the lights out warning was given, though. Dean, especially, looked like he really didn't want to face whatever was lurking in his dreams. Yet they said their good-nights pleasantly enough and headed for their bunks.

"Uh, guys?" Carter suddenly spoke up from across the room. "I thought you might like these."

The brothers turned and saw that Carter was holding up two dream-catchers.

"It's really more of a Chippewa thing," Carter shrugged, "but just 'cause I'm part Sioux doesn't mean I don't know how to make 'em."

"Wait," Dean said. "You made those? For us? Today?"

"Yeah," Carter confirmed, confused. "I thought you might have nightmares from... whatever sent you here."

Sam and Dean looked at each other, and Hogan wondered if they might actually break down and cry. Then Sam walked around the table and accepted the dream-catchers from Carter. After staring at them for a moment, he looked back at Carter with a sad smile. "Thanks, Carter."

The last thing Hogan saw before retiring to his quarters for the night was the Winchesters carefully pinning the dream-catchers to the wall over their heads.


	2. Hazy Shade of Winter

Chapter 2  
Hazy Shade of Winter

Sgt. Hans Schultz's opinions of bed checks varied depending on what he "didn't know" was happening and on who ordered the check. He didn't see any reason for this one other than the fact that Maj. Hochstetter had ordered it. He didn't see any reason not to have it, though, other than inconvenience for himself and Col. Klink, so he didn't object, but he did suggest checking Barracks 2 last because there might be some monkey business going on that he truly didn't know about. The reason he gave, however, was not wanting to disturb Col. Hogan, and Klink agreed with that.

To Schultz's relief, everyone in Barracks 2 was present and accounted for and sound asleep. Both of the new men seemed to be having bad dreams when he shone his flashlight on them to check their faces, but they didn't react to the light any more than any of the other prisoners did. Klink was satisfied after he and Schultz checked on Hogan, and they got ready to leave.

And then Capt. Winchester started screaming.

Sgt. Winchester was wide awake and on his feet in seconds, trying valiantly to get his brother calmed down. "Dean! _Dean!_ Wake up!"

"_CAS! SAAAAAAAAAAM!_"

"DEAN!"

Klink and Schultz were frozen in shock at the door when Hogan came up to them. "Kommandant? Schultz? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

That snapped Klink out of it. "Hogan, what is the meaning of this?"

Hogan jerked his head toward his quarters, and Klink followed. So did Schultz, though he found it difficult not to join Sgt. Winchester in trying to wake his brother from what sounded like a terrible nightmare.

Once they were in Hogan's quarters, Klink hissed, "Hogan, what is going on here?"

Hogan sighed. "It was a hell of a crash, Kommandant. The Winchesters were the only ones who survived, and when the plane burned, Dean thought Sam was still inside. Lost two of their best friends, not to mention the rest of the crew. Seems like they get all the hard missions, too, get shot up more often than not. _And_ their dad was killed at Pearl Harbor."

Schultz gasped, fighting tears. "That's _terrible_!"

Even Klink, who was not known for his sympathy for the prisoners, looked concerned. "What can we do? I can't have this happening every night—they'll wake the whole camp!"

Hogan sighed. "Wish I knew. We've assigned them to work details that should help during the day; maybe the benefits will carry over at night."

"Perhaps they should go to a hospital."

Hogan looked horrified. "You're gonna lock them up in a _mental ward_ for having nightmares? That's cruel!"

"But Hogan, if they're shell-shocked..."

"Kommandant, it hasn't even been a _day_ since they were shot down. Give 'em some time. They're away from the front lines. Maybe a few days here at the country club will be just what they need."

Schultz looked back out into the main room. Capt. Winchester had stopped screaming and was sitting up, talking to Carter while Sgt. Winchester kept a hand on his back—not rubbing, but comforting nonetheless. And amazingly, Capt. Winchester had his hand on Carter's shoulder and looked like _he_ was comforting _Carter_ instead of the other way around. Schultz had to maintain his composure because he was on duty, but he couldn't stop a tear from slipping out.

"All right," Klink was saying. "We'll wait a few days. Schultz?"

Schultz took a deep breath. "_Ja, Herr Kommandant?_"

"Let's get out of here."

"_Jawohl, Herr Kommandant_."

Schultz held himself together as he and Klink left the barracks and made their report to Hochstetter. But as soon as he got back to his own quarters, the toymaker's heart that hid beneath the Luftwaffe uniform broke completely, and he wept as he prayed for the Winchester boys.

* * *

The Winchesters' varying states of chronic sleep deprivation, grief, alcoholism, tentative grips on sanity, and other assorted post-Hell, post-Apocalypse, and Leviathan-crisis traumas made the first couple of days at Stalag 13 rougher than was probably usual for men who were actually Air Force officers. After those first couple of days, though, once they'd gotten used to the camp routine, Sam concluded that bizarrely, he kind of liked it there. Aside from the other men smoking like chimneys, the barracks were no worse than many of the other squats and no-tell motels where they'd stayed—cleaner than average, if he had to be honest, even if the straw mattress wasn't comfortable and the bunk was almost too short for a man his height. The camp did have running water and functional facilities; the showers were cold, but that wasn't anything the Winchesters hadn't gotten used to on the run from the Leviathans. The routine was reassuring, and the exercise period usually involved some kind of fun game that the brothers hadn't played in... decades, honestly, even centuries in Sam's case, if one took Hell years into account. He genuinely couldn't remember the last time he'd played volleyball, but he was fairly sure it was more recent than the last time he'd pitched horseshoes or played catch. The prisoners were friendly, too, even going so far as to distract the guard while Sam and Dean were showering so that their tattoos and scars wouldn't attract undue attention. And thanks to LeBeau, the food was good—probably better than they knew, given that Sam happened to catch the Frenchman doctoring Dean's coffee with vitamin oil one morning.

It probably said something about their lives that being trapped in a POW camp in the middle of World War II actually seemed like a vacation, but Sam decided not to think about that too hard.

Not only that, but it was also easier to ignore Lucifer here without having to resort to the pain of pressing on the scar on his left hand, a trick Dean had used to help him recognize what was real when the Hell hallucinations had started. Sam _knew_ he was in a different reality for a host of reasons, and he _knew_ Lucifer could not actually have followed them, not least because Lucifer tended to vanish into static during morning calisthenics. Keeping himself busy with yard cleanup helped, too. His grip on reality was still tenuous, true, but at least it didn't feel quite so much like the thread by which he was hanging on would unravel at the least provocation.

That his telekinesis seemed to be returning to a very small degree, given the way bits of litter tended to freeze when he looked at them, was also easy enough to ignore. No one else commented on it, and Sam couldn't be absolutely sure he wasn't imagining it.

What got tricky was tuning out Lucifer's commentary on the guards. Schultz went out of his way to be nice to the brothers, as did Cpl. Langenscheidt, and though Lucifer tried to convince Sam that they weren't trustworthy, Sam had seen enough episodes of _Hogan's Heroes_ to know that Lucifer was wrong. They were both indifferent to most of the others, though Sgt. Hauschild and Lt. Bergmann seemed decent enough to Sam. Yet one guard, Pvt. Knorz, kept attracting Lucifer's attention—in a positive way. And although Sam tried not to listen, he couldn't help noticing that Knorz seemed to be watching both him and Dean. More than once Sam spotted Knorz hanging around either Barracks 2 or the motor pool.

Hogan had warned the Winchesters on the first morning that the Gestapo might be setting a trap for the Heroes. Lucifer wouldn't shut up about Knorz, and Sam _had_ shared both headspace and the Cage with the real Lucifer long enough to know how the Devil truly thought. So on the 19th, just to satisfy his own curiosity, Sam volunteered to help Carter clean Klink's office and snuck a peek at the duty roster.

_Yahtzee_. Sgt. Schmidt was assigned to the motor pool, and Knorz was supposed to be patrolling on the opposite side of camp from Barracks 2.

That cinched it for Sam. And when Lucifer was chased off by Carter accidentally whacking Sam with his broom handle, Sam took advantage of the respite to come up with a quick way to find out for certain whether Knorz were Gestapo or something worse.

Hogan and Kinch had just finished a game of catch and were heading back to the barracks when Sam and Carter came out of the office, so after making sure the coast was clear, Sam set a quick pace across the compound to catch up to them while Carter took off to do something else. "Hey, Colonel?" he asked quietly as he walked up to Hogan just outside the barracks door. "Are there any important bombing missions coming up the Germans need to not know about?"

Hogan frowned. "Why?"

"Knorz. I can't exactly say why, but I've got a feeling he's a plant. So if Dean and I were to talk a little too freely about a mission that _won't_ be happening..."

"Winchester, you are aware that that's exactly what _they_ are planning to do to _us_?"

"Yeah, but we're the new prisoners—traumatized, shot down on our 49th mission. Definitely not hunters with their own code who know there's a perfect spot for eavesdropping not three feet from where Dean's currently working." Sam smiled innocently.

Hogan and Kinch looked at each other in amused surprise, picking up on Sam's idea. American bomber crews were routinely sent home on rotation after flying fifty missions; it might make sense for an airman who was eager to get home to try to find out his last mission in advance.

Then Hogan shrugged. "Guess it can't hurt. Your fiftieth mission would have been tomorrow, target..." He thought for a moment. "Osnabrück."

Sam blinked. "What's in Osnabrück?"

"Nothing that important. We've been hitting it pretty hard throughout the war; it's an industrial center."

Sam pondered this for a moment. "But it's further from the front lines than something that _is_ important."

Hogan shrugged with his eyebrows.

Sam laughed. "Okay. One fake raid on Osnabrück, coming up."

"Be careful, Sam. If Knorz is Gestapo, he'll be suspicious if you let too much slip or say it too loud."

"Oh, trust me, sir. We don't know anything about acoustics, and we've definitely never had to bluff our way out of anything more than a parking ticket." Sam smiled innocently again.

Kinch's eyes narrowed. "What's the toughest jam you have had to bluff your way out of? For real, I mean."

Sam lowered his voice. "Honestly? We got thrown into this other reality where _our_ lives are a TV show... and we had to pretend to be the actors who were pretending to be us. On camera. It didn't go too well!"

Kinch's laughter followed Sam as he made a long detour around the barracks to be suitably depressed by the time he got to the motor pool. Said detour also allowed him to see whether Knorz were near the barracks or where he was supposed to be patrolling; he wasn't, but Sam did see him disappear into the motor pool. Perfect. Dean was elbow-deep in a truck engine when Sam arrived, and Knorz was nowhere to be seen, so Sam assumed Knorz would find his way within earshot as soon as Sam approached Dean. Thus, he made sure he was wearing his most emo face as he walked up to the truck.

Big brother radar being what it was, Dean looked around at Sam in concern before Sam could even speak. "Sammy? What's up?"

Sam sighed. "Nothin'. I was just... thinking about that parade they were gonna have for us when we got back to Lawrence next week. Ticker tape, ninety-nine red balloons, everything."

Dean nodded slowly, processing the code phrase. "You do remember what happened last time we _left_ Lawrence, right?"

Sam huffed—as if either of them would ever forget the showdown in Stull Cemetery that had stopped the Apocalypse, ending with Sam wresting back control of his body from Lucifer long enough to dive into a hellmouth as a prelude to 180 Hell years in the Cage while his mis-rescued body wandered about soulless until Dean got him out. "Yeah," he said. "But it can't happen again, so... I dunno. I was just really looking forward to being done, going home, y'know? All the missions we've survived, and we get shot down on number forty-nine."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm sick of bein' shot at. And I am not gonna miss that English cuisine back at base. Fish and chips is all right, but the rest of it?"

"Seriously."

"Give me a bacon cheeseburger with extra onion and some Key lime pie..."

"Key lime pie? In _January_?"

"Shut up, Sam."

"And you know they're rationing sugar still."

"All right, cobbler made with canned peaches. The point stands."

"Yeah. And it would've all been over tomorrow. Goodbye, Gatwick; goodbye, Osnabrück; hello, Jay Bird's blue plate special."

Dean frowned. "What'd you say?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, nobody can hear me."

"We are behind enemy lines, Sam. We still need to be careful."

"Look, Schmidt's clear over there." Sam pointed to Schmidt with his hand and to the point where he suspected Knorz was hiding with his head.

Dean caught both motions and deliberately turned away from Knorz to look and wave at Schmidt. "Yeah, well. Ixnay, _capisce_?"

Sam sighed. "Yeah, sure."

"Hey, as long as you're here, you wanna help?"

"Sure. What do you need?"

Dean put Sam right to work—and they both pretended they hadn't heard the rustle of fabric as Knorz moved away.

* * *

The next evening, Knorz—actually _Sturmscharführer_ Knorz of the SS _Sicherheitsdienst_—left Stalag 13 at the end of his shift and returned to his apartment in Hammelburg. When he switched on the light, however, Maj. Wolfgang Hochstetter was sitting on his couch, flanked by two junior officers.

"So, Knorz," Hochstetter said slowly. "They're going to hit Osnabrück again, _ja_?"

Knorz swallowed hard. "That's what the prisoner said, _Herr Major_."

"That's what the prisoner said. Which prisoner?"

"One of the new men, Sgt. Winchester."

"Not Col. Hogan?"

"_Nein, Herr Major_."

Hochstetter chuckled unpleasantly. "And how did you happen to gain this information, Knorz?"

"I... overheard him talking to his brother in the motor pool."

"And there is no way they could have known you were nearby, eh?"

"I... did not believe so, _Herr Major_."

"So it is just a coincidence that we sent you to Stalag 13 to find a ring of spies and saboteurs and you came back with information on a bombing raid that could have helped the all-victorious Luftwaffe make some gains against the barbarian American Air Force... if it had actually happened."

Knorz paled. "There was not a raid today?"

"Oh, _ja_, there was a raid all right. But it never got to Osnabrück. It never got to Germany at all. We moved the mobile anti-aircraft battery from the Dutch plant that made the liquid oxygen for the V2 rockets, and today that plant was demolished by _British Spitfires!_"

Knorz's stomach turned. "_Herr Major_, I swear to you, I suspected nothing. The new prisoners are crazy—they are weak—they could not have known I was there!"

Hochstetter shot to his feet and began pacing. "Crazy? Weak? _You_ are crazy, Knorz! They have spent five days with the most dangerous man in all Germany, and you suspected nothing?"

"The sergeant, he sees things which are not there. The captain, he has night terrors, his hands shake."

"And how do you know this?"

"The guards gossip. And I have been observing them."

"Oh, you have been observing them. _Too obviously_ you have been observing them! You watch a man who sees things that are not there and expect him to think that _you_ are not there?"

Knorz had no answer to that accusation, but he pleaded, "I thought they might prove to be the weak link in Papa Bear's organization."

"And instead they have found the weak link in ours." Hochstetter's lip curled. "Perhaps you will not prove to be such a liability in Pomerania."

It was all Knorz could do to keep from fainting.

* * *

Dean tried. He really did. Even if the prisoners had a stash of hooch somewhere, he knew he couldn't risk getting caught with alcohol in his system, not here. Not now. It would only make trouble for Hogan. And he'd gone sober for four days or so at a time before without too many consequences, so he thought he'd be okay and be able to hide any shakes and jitters that resulted this time. But after about six days, he couldn't keep the DTs under wraps anymore. He made it through roll call but shook like a leaf all through breakfast, and when he started to get up afterward, Hogan's hand came down firmly on his shoulder. "Forget it, Winchester. You're confined to quarters until you're well. I'll tell Klink you've got the flu."

"Sir—"

"That's a direct order, Captain."

It wasn't until he was back in bed, trying not to shake the bunk apart, that Dean wondered why he'd accepted that order from someone barely ten years his senior as readily as he would have if it had come from Dad. Hogan wasn't _actually _Dean's superior officer... but somehow, it helped not to be in charge anymore. Having to save the world with only Sam for backup had gotten old seven years ago.

Of course, so had losing everyone and everything they cared about, knowing how much of it was his own fault for having sold his soul to save Sam's life and then having broken in Hell, turning torturer and thereby breaking the first seal on Lucifer's Cage. Sam had broken the last seal and started the Apocalypse, but he wouldn't have been able to do so if Dean hadn't broken the first, and Dean still couldn't forgive himself for that. And he really didn't want to dwell on how Castiel, the angel who'd rescued him from Hell, had betrayed them with a bad plan to stop Raphael from restarting the Apocalypse. When Dean had called Cas on it, Cas had tried to sideline both brothers by breaking Sam's head, unleashing the Hell trauma that now left Sam seeing Lucifer everywhere he went. Dean might eventually be able to forgive Cas for opening Purgatory and releasing the Leviathans, but he didn't know if he'd ever be able to forgive Cas for hurting Sammy.

And people wondered why he drank so much. He knew it wasn't healthy, but how the hell else was he supposed to deal?

Prison life being what it was, however, there wasn't an awful lot for Dean to do while he was on bed rest and the others were all outside, aside from giving in to LeBeau's insistence that he eat all the chicken soup he could hold. He was too shaky to read or to beef up any of the wards he and Sam had set after breakfast their second day there, and though Kinch had gotten him a small transistor radio that he could listen to with the volume turned way down, his only options appeared to be German radio—oompah music and torch songs with incomprehensible lyrics—or whatever happened to be on the BBC, which was usually Big Band music or classical. The latter put him to sleep, and the former only made him think about both how awesome and how disappointing it had been to hang out with Eliot Ness when Chronos had dragged him back to 1944. He couldn't help wondering whether they'd ever be able to locate Ness's journal, if he even kept one. And _that_ made him wonder what Ness had written about him, whether he'd been a total disappointment to his hero or whether Ness had even bothered to record his involvement in the Chronos hunt at all. He kind of hoped he'd made a positive enough impression—Ness _had_ called him "Untouchable" there at the last—but he couldn't be sure.

He'd disappointed every other hero of his that he'd met. Why should Ness be any different?

He was still in one such funk a couple of days later, though he'd dragged himself to the table to eat and hadn't yet dragged himself back to Sam's bunk, when the other men started filtering back into the barracks after the work details. Hogan went into his quarters, and most of the other prisoners drifted to their bunks, but Carter sat down at the table across from Dean.

"Capt. Winchester?" Carter prompted. "What's wrong, sir?"

Dean shook his head. "You wouldn't understand."

"I dunno; I could try. It's not like I don't know anything about war."

"Yeah, but you've got the whole Army. You've got a big team; you've got the Underground. Me and Sam, we've got to save the world on our own. Again. From a threat we can't just kill. And this time all our friends are dead."

"Why don't you ask God for help?" Carter frowned.

Dean snorted. "He's missing. Even the angels haven't seen him."

Carter's frown deepened. "How do you lose an infinite, omnipresent God?"

Dean blinked. "I... don't know."

Carter sighed. "Wish Dr. McKay was here. He's a physicist; he might know."

Dean blinked again and stared at Carter. "McKay. _Rodney_ McKay?"

"Yeah, do you know him? He and Col. Sheppard helped us blow up an atomic research lab back in October."

Dean was still laughing a full minute later when Sam came back. Sam looked around at the others, bewildered.

"Crackers, that's wot 'e is," Newkirk grumbled into his coffee, which only made Dean laugh harder.

"Dude. _Breathe_," said Sam.

Dean finally gasped for air. "Can we stay here, Sammy?" he asked, wiping the tears off his face. "I wanna go to Atlantis."

Sam cleared his throat and looked at Newkirk. "What's the saying—concur your analysis?"

"Hey, at least you can shoot Wraith with regular ammo," Dean giggled.

"And how, exactly, are we supposed to _get_ to Atlantis when it won't even be discovered for another sixty years?"

"Solar flare. Or hell, maybe we could find Chronos—you remember the summoning spell, right?"

"Dean."

"Oh, lighten up, Francis."

Sam snorted and rolled his eyes.

Hogan came out of his office at that point and looked from one brother to the other. "Did I miss something?"

"Inside joke," they chorused automatically.

Before Hogan could inquire further, Sam held up a finger. "Oh, Colonel, I don't know if this means anything or if it's even reliable, but I overheard Schultz and a couple of the other guards talking a little while ago. They were saying something about Knorz getting transferred to East Prussia, wondering if it was just the standard story of someone getting sent to the Eastern Front or if there were a new troop build-up underway, maybe some kind of attempt to relieve Memel and retake Riga."

Hogan frowned. "Who was wondering?"

"I don't remember his name, sorry. One of the younger guards brought it up. Schultz said he hadn't heard anything, but the others were laughing at him because he never knows anything."

"And it was just speculation?"

"Yes, sir. A couple of 'Oh, yeah, So-and-so's being transferred, too' remarks, but nothing more than... anecdata, some people call it in our day."

Dean snorted. "'Some people'? Some _nerds_, you mean. Who even talks like that?"

Sam shot him a Look. "I learned it from _Ash_."

Dean shut up. Ash's death was one of many that still weighed heavily on Dean's conscience, even though the brothers had seen him happy and well in Heaven the last time they were both dead at the same time.

"What do you think, Colonel?" Carter asked.

Hogan shook his head. "I dunno. Wouldn't be much to go on even without the Gestapo around. As it is... all it means definitely is that Knorz won't be here for a while. We can't take the risk of sending anything to London, not now."

There were nods and "yes, sir"s all around, and everyone drifted back to what they'd been doing before.

Sam grabbed himself a cup of coffee and sat down across from Dean. "You okay?"

Dean shrugged. "Listen, Sam..."

Sam smiled a little. "Forget it, dude. I know you didn't mean anything."

Dean sighed and played with his empty soup mug for a moment before confessing quietly, "I wish you'd been with me, man. In '44." At Sam's confused blink, he continued, "Maybe... maybe this time we could have..."

And Sam's face fell as he caught on. "Dean..."

"Dude, it's _my fault_. I'm the reason Mom knew about Liddy Walsh. I'm the reason she insisted on going with Samuel to try to stop Azazel. I'm the one who missed the shot, _twice_." Dean didn't know why he was letting this spill now, here, with so many other people in the room, even if they were giving the brothers as much space as they could; he hadn't even been thinking about the time he'd walked into a predestination paradox. Maybe the detox was doing more of a number on him than he'd thought.

Sam reached across the table and grabbed Dean's trembling hand. "_Dean_. The angels set you up in '73. And even if I had been there in '44, it might not have gone any better than in '78. I mean, Michael scrubbed our warning from Mom's memory then; he could have stopped us from changing anything in '44." His grip tightened. "You can't let the what-ifs eat you alive like this, man. Next time we face something like Osiris..." He trailed off, shaking his head and clearly fighting tears as he recalled how the god had condemned Dean to death, despite Sam's argument that Dean's sense of guilt was irrational. The ghost of their friend Jo would have been forced to carry out the sentence had Sam not been able to gank Osiris first. Next time there might not be a way out.

And that brought to mind a more recent conversation, after the run-in with the Amazons. _I don't care how you deal. Just don't... don't get yourself killed._

Dean found himself fighting tears of his own. "Sammy..."

"_Dean_." The _I need you_ was unspoken, yet Dean heard it loud and clear.

The tears fell, damn them, and Dean couldn't meet Sam's eyes anymore. _I can't_, he wanted to say. _I can't let it go. I can't shake it off. I don't know how._ But his mouth remained stubbornly shut as the stupid tears kept running down his cheeks, and he couldn't even muster the strength to wipe them away.

Sam rubbed Dean's wrist. "Hey," he whispered, barely audible over the sounds of the other prisoners trying to keep themselves occupied and not eavesdrop or intrude on the brothers' moment. Dean made himself look up to find that Sam couldn't keep the tears at bay, either.

"I'm sorry, Sam. I'm a failure. I'm a monster." Damn withdrawal—where was this stuff coming from? At least his voice was as quiet as Sam's, and only Sam would know he meant it more literally than not. He had, after all, been a vampire for a day before they found a cure, and that was after everything Dean had done in Hell.

Sam wasn't buying it, though. "And I'm not?"

"Sam..."

"Dean."

"You don't know what I did down there."

"You don't know what I did without my soul."

"That wasn't you. And with Ruby—hell, you were high."

"You were Stockholmed. _Non compos mentis._"

"Sam."

"_Dean._"

LeBeau cleared his throat at that point before walking close enough to potentially overhear. "_Pardon, Messieurs_, but I'm about to need this space to prepare dinner."

Sam let go of Dean's wrist then, but only long enough to come around the table and all but carry Dean back to the bunks. And if Dean thought the moment was over, he was mistaken. "Do you know what... what I regret most?" Sam asked as he settled Dean on his own bunk, the better to help him up for supper. "From when I was soulless?"

Dean sighed. "Sam..."

"Dean, I need to say this. I mean, yeah, I did my time and all, but... I _let_ you get turned because I knew there was a cure. And it didn't even occur to me that you'd freak out and go..."

Dean shot Sam a warning glare. The vampire incident had cost him the only long-term relationship he'd ever had because he'd nearly killed his girlfriend; that topic was off limits forever.

Sam caught it and didn't finish the sentence. "I just... the fact that I'm even capable of that..."

The flash of anger faded into pain over the whole rotten mess, not least because Dean hated to see Sam blame himself for something that had happened while he wasn't himself. "Sam."

Sam shook his head and kept going. "Maybe you were right. Maybe I am a monster, a... a blood-sucking freak."

Dean blinked. "Wait, whoa, _what?_ I've said some stupid stuff, Sam, but I don't remember saying _that_."

"It was in that voice mail."

"What voice mail?"

"The one you left... before..."

"Aw, _hell_." Dean understood now—after a major fight with Sam in the last days before the Apocalypse, he'd called to try to mend fences, but the message he had left clearly wasn't the message Sam had heard. "I knew Zach had done something, but..."

Sam frowned. "Zachariah?"

"He changed it, Sam. Him or Ruby, I'm not sure." They'd both been played like a Stradivarius—Dean by the angels, Sam by the demons.

"Then... you didn't..."

"No. I didn't."

Sam's only response was to pull Dean into a crushing hug. And Dean was still too weak to stop the tears.

Finally, though, Dean managed to say, "Hey. You want me to give you the flu for real?"

Sam gave a damp chuckle and let go.

"Honestly, Sam, a man in my condition—"

"In your condition? Dean, you are _not_ terminal!"

"Maybe I am. Maybe I've got consumption. Or double pneumonia. One of those things where you have to move to Arizona before you croak."

Sam burst out laughing. "Any excuse to see the Grand Canyon before it's over, right?"

"Damn straight, little brother." Dean felt his own spirits lifting somewhat and managed a genuine smile. "Hot sand and hot chicks. A winning combination."

That seemed to be everyone's cue to start another round of Winchester Trivial Pursuit, which kept both brothers happily occupied until lights out. Talking so much was exhausting to Dean, but the endorphins did help somewhat. And the chick flick moment did seem to have cleared the air between him and Sam, at least a little, which was always a relief.

It still didn't stop the nightmares. And even being allowed outside the next day for some (cold) fresh air and sunshine didn't do much to pull him out of the funk he'd slid back into. So he really wasn't in the mood for conversation when Sgt. Wilson wandered over and saw the look on his face.

"Problem, Captain?" Wilson asked amiably, sitting down beside Dean.

Dean snorted. "Yeah. Wishing I could go home and get blind drunk and forget about war for a while."

Wilson didn't take the hint. "Shouldn't self-medicate like that, son. Oh, trust me, I know the feeling, but it doesn't help. You'll drink yourself into an early grave."

Dean let out a short, harsh laugh. "If you only knew..."

"—Don't tell me you already _have_."

"Not drunk myself to death, no, but it's about the only way I haven't died yet. Well, that or cancer." Dean snorted again and shook his head. "Not too many old men in our line of work. The good die young and the ornery barely make it past 50. And that goes double for the ones who get mixed up with us. Don't know why _we_ keep coming back; the rest of the family just keeps dyin'."

"First rule of warfare," Wilson said sympathetically. "Good men die."

"And rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one," Dean quoted bitterly. "Thank you, Henry Blake."

"Look, Captain, whatever's eating you, even if it _is_ your fault, I can tell you for a fact that keeping it bottled up will kill you. You need to talk to someone."

"Who? Nobody here would understand except maybe Col. Hogan, and he said he doesn't want to know."

"Talk to God if you have to."

"You think I haven't tried?" Dean was really on a tear now. "How can I talk to God when He _won't_ _answer the phone?_"

"Maybe He has," Wilson returned mildly.

That brought Dean up short. "What do you mean?"

"You're here, right?" At Dean's frown, Wilson continued, "Usually when we have 'visitors,' they're here because we need them for something, but we're on complete lockdown. So maybe this time there's something _you_ need from _us_."

"Like what?"

Wilson shrugged. "Learning how to be POWs?"

"How so?"

"Look, even here, there's a limit to how much control we have over what we do and what's done to us. Col. Hogan has to do a lot of fancy footwork to get guys out of the cooler, stop transfers, keep guys out of the Gestapo's hands. Sometimes it's still not enough. Some men go stir crazy. Some men just get on Hochstetter's bad side, or Klink's or Burkhalter's. And if you fight back too hard... pow. Shot while escaping."

"At least they're humans. Humans you can kill."

"Only if they let down their guard. And they don't, not that often. Even if they did, you kill too many, the rest start asking questions."

"But you've got backup."

"Backup with limits. Backup that fails now and then. Backup that dies just like the monsters that are holding us. I trust the men in this camp with my life, Captain, but not even Col. Hogan can pull off some miracles. Sometimes he's fast, but not fast enough to beat truth serum or torture. Sometimes the goons get us boxed in. Sometimes the Krauts get lucky. Sometimes London drops us a man and he gets shot up on the way down, dies before our guys bring him in. Sometimes a plane or a bomb just fails; sometimes the weather louses things up, and it's nobody's fault."

Dean wondered wildly just who was playing father confessor here.

"My point, Captain, is that you can't win them all. You can't control everything. You can't even always prevent terrible things from being done to you. And that isn't a personal failure on your part." Wilson paused. "That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like hell every time. But that's not a personal failure, either. It means you're human."

"So what am I supposed to do, huh? How am I supposed to deal?"

"I don't know." Wilson stood. "I just know that somehow we all get up every morning and keep going, one day at a time. And if you can't do that... you die." And on that cheerful note, Wilson left.

Dean supposed that advice might have helped someone else. But death didn't scare him or Sam anymore. They kept going because they couldn't leave each other behind again, because someone had to stop the world from offing itself, because everyone they'd lost would want them to. Yet even now, even here, if they both went together... Dean wasn't so sure he would mind. At least here, there'd be a chance it would really be over, even though they'd never see Mom or Dad again.

He sighed and forced himself to go inside to eat some lunch.

* * *

Hochstetter was not a patient man. He knew that intelligence work took time, but if a plan took more than a day or two to yield results, his temper grew considerably shorter. So it took considerable effort for him to remain calm as he waited for Pvt. Hausmann, Knorz's replacement, to return to Gestapo headquarters from Stalag 13 at the end of the fourth day with no unusual enemy action in East Prussia and no messages intercepted by the radio detector truck parked halfway between Hammelburg and the camp.

Finally, Hausmann showed and reported to Hochstetter. "Capt. Winchester is recovering, _Herr Major_, and there has been no change in Sgt. Winchester."

"You are sure Sgt. Winchester has overheard your speculations, hm?"

"_Jawohl, Herr Major_. And so has Sgt. Schultz, whom I have observed talking with Col. Hogan many times. He has had every opportunity to draw his own conclusions if word has gotten to him—and I _saw_ Sgt. Winchester near us the first day." Hausmann paused. "Might it be, _Herr Major_..."

"No," Hochstetter snapped. "Papa Bear_ is_ at Stalag 13, I _smell_ it. He is simply too smart to take the bait so soon after fooling Knorz." He got up and paced for a moment as he thought out loud. "The Geneva Convention is a nuisance, though we have our ways around it. These prisoners are too new; the Red Cross will be watching too closely. We cannot push the boundaries very far." Then he looked at Hausmann. "How well is Capt. Winchester? Could we interrogate him safely?"

Hausmann considered. "He is on light duty, I believe. He could handle questioning, perhaps, but nothing more. At least, in my opinion... I'm not a medical officer."

Hochstetter drummed the fingers of his right hand on his belt buckle as he thought. Then he nodded once. "Very well. Tomorrow I shall make the acquaintance of the Winchester brothers. And mark my words, Hausmann: they will talk."

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: _Sturmscharführer_ was roughly the equivalent of a technical sergeant; the _Sicherheitsdienst_ (SD) was the intelligence wing of the SS.


	3. Stormy Weather

Chapter 3  
Stormy Weather

Hogan wasn't at all sure why, but he got the sense during morning roll call that he needed to have the coffee pot plugged in just in case he needed to overhear something in Klink's office. Klink wasn't up to anything out of the ordinary that Hogan knew of, and there weren't any visitors to the camp. It was just one of those gut feelings he knew better than to ignore, especially with his suspicion of the Gestapo having tried for four days running to plant fake information to trap him, so he went with it.

Sure enough, Klink's phone rang mid-morning. Kinch still hadn't gotten around to replacing the phone tap, so all Hogan could hear through the room bug was Klink's side of the conversation, which sounded normal enough until:

"_Ich verstehe nicht, Major Hochstetter. Hauptmann Winchester ist... Nein, sie wurden gleichzeitig eingefangen._"

Hogan frowned. Why would Hochstetter be asking questions about the Winchesters?

"_Ja, natürlich, aber—jawohl, Herr Major. Wir erwarten Sie. __Heil Hitler._" Klink grumbled something uncomplimentary at the phone after hanging up.

_We'll expect you_. That sounded like Hochstetter was coming in, probably to question the Winchesters. But why would he call ahead? Normally he would have just shown up—unless he wanted to trap Klink (or Hogan) with evidence of coaching the prisoners on how to respond. Or maybe he needed to make sure the Winchesters were well enough to question.

Hogan sighed and unplugged the coffee pot. Ultimately, the reason for the call didn't matter. He needed to give Dean, at least, a heads-up and inform him of his rights under the Geneva Convention.

It was a cold, snowy Sunday, and most of the prisoners had gone to the recreation hall. A handful were still lounging on their bunks reading, however, and LeBeau had drafted Carter and Dean to help with preparing something experimental for lunch. Carter was peeling potatoes, and Dean was slowly and cautiously grinding herbs with a small mortar and pestle.

"Would you like me to write down the recipe for you?" LeBeau was asking as Hogan walked up to the table.

Dean smiled a little and shook his head. "Thanks, but assuming something does pull us back, I dunno if we'll be able to take anything with us. I'll try to remember it, though."

"You don't even know what it'll taste like yet," Carter reminded LeBeau.

"Carter," Hogan replied, "in all our years together, I've only known a dish of LeBeau's to fail once. Whatever this is, I'm sure it will taste wonderful."

LeBeau beamed. "Thank you, _Colonel._"

"What failed?" Dean asked.

"Chow mein—I had to make it with sauerkraut."

Dean gave an exaggerated shudder.

Hogan grinned but turned the conversation back to his own purpose. "Where's your brother, Winchester?"

"Ping-pong tournament," Dean answered. "Didn't know the Sasquatch played anything but pool and darts, but I guess he and Newkirk got tired of tryin' to out-hustle each other."

"... Out-_hustle_?"

Dean shrugged. "Friendly competition, including whose technique is better and whose childhood was worse. I think they're tied."

Hogan snorted in amused disbelief.

"Why, you need him?"

"Actually, I need to talk to _you_ for a minute. If he was here, I'd have reeled him in, too, but as it is, you can pass it on."

Dean frowned in confusion and concern. "Okay."

"C'mon into the office."

"Yes, sir." Still frowning, Dean stood—more stiffly than shakily, which Hogan hoped was good—and followed.

Once they were both inside, Hogan motioned to the stool beside his desk. "Sit down, sit down."

Dean sat as Hogan closed the door. "What's up?"

"How familiar are you with the provisions of the Geneva Convention?"

Dean shrugged. "Prisoners don't have to give more than name, rank, and serial number."

Hogan nodded. "Good. There's more to it, especially about how prisoners of war are to be treated, but that's one of the relevant parts. The other you should know is this: any prisoner who's involved in sabotage or espionage isn't covered by the Geneva Convention. If the Krauts find out about what's going on here in Stalag 13, we probably won't even get a trial, just a firing squad."

Dean nodded slowly. "O-kay. Some reason I need to know that? Did we do something wrong?"

"No, nothing like that." Hogan sighed. "Look, Winchester, I know you and your brother have been having a rough time, so I figured I owed you some advance warning. There's a Gestapo officer coming to question you both, a Major Hochstetter. He's nasty, and he's dangerous."

"Is he human?"

"Depends on your definition."

Dean huffed. "Why's he looking for us?"

"I dunno, but it's a cinch it's not just about what you and Sam pulled with Knorz. Hochstetter wants information about our operation, and if he knows you and Sam aren't 100%, he probably thinks you're our weakest link. He's gonna come down hard, either with bribes or with threats, maybe both; but he'll try to push every button you have to convince you to cough up something he can use."

Dean laughed bitterly and started pacing, arms waving as he ranted. "What can he do, send us back? We've got no home, no money, no job, no degrees; our car's in storage; all our friends are dead; our whole family is dead; we're on the Most Wanted list of about a hundred kinds of monsters, not to mention the FBI; and my brother's got the Devil tap-dancing in his head. How the hell can the Gestapo make my life _worse?_"

"Winchester, you're not taking this seriously enough. I've been a pilot a long time, but I've been a spy longer than that, and if there's one thing I've learned from West Point on, it's that _everyone breaks._"

Dean stilled. "What?"

"The lucky ones die first or get out—rescue, trade, escape. Some people can hold out for years. Some go crazy. But everyone has a breaking point, and the Gestapo are masters at finding it. Torture, mind games, drugs, you name it."

Dean looked at him with a curious frown. "What's the longest you've known someone to hold out?"

Hogan shrugged. "Depends on the interrogation technique."

"Under torture, let's say. Like, the worst torture imaginable. Relentless. They take you to the point of death, then put you back together only to take you apart again the next day."

Hogan considered. "Five, six years?"

Dean blinked. "_Six?_"

"That survived and broke before being rescued... yeah, I think so."

Dean ran a hand over his face. "Say you heard someone was tortured that bad for thirty years non-stop before he broke."

"I'd say he had an incredibly strong will."

"Say a hundred, never broke before he escaped."

"I'd call him a liar. Or maybe exaggerating and it wasn't actually the worst torture imaginable. Maybe they weren't trying to break him."

A thousand nameless emotions flashed across Dean's face as he ran a hand over his mouth and chin again, eyes no longer focused on Hogan for the moment. He swallowed hard a couple of times and shook his head as if he was drawing new conclusions about something and couldn't believe he'd been wrong. But somehow he looked slightly less wrecked than usual. When he finally spoke again, though, his voice was hoarse. "The guy who held out for thirty years... say... when he broke, he went Nazi. Like, joined the Gestapo."

"It could happen," Hogan replied carefully. "Happens to hostages and kidnapping victims sometimes—the Mary McElroy case comes to mind, and kids captured by Indians who were tortured and thought they had no chance of going back to their own life, although that's not exactly the same thing. And near the breaking point, the prisoner can start to identify with the interrogator. Doesn't make it a free decision if he wasn't in his right mind."

"What if he tortured? What if he _liked_ it?"

Hogan got the feeling this wasn't a hypothetical question. "Was he rescued?"

"Yeah."

"Did he express remorse afterward? I mean, real remorse?"

Dean swallowed hard again. "Regretted it the rest of his life."

"Then I'd say he wasn't as damaged as he thought. The real bad apples never realize they've done wrong."

Dean's eyes slipped shut, and his chin trembled for a brief moment, as if Hogan had unwittingly given him absolution. Then he drew a deep breath and opened his eyes again. "Thanks for the heads-up, Colonel."

Hogan nodded once. "You're welcome."

Dean made his way out into the main room, and Hogan watched from his doorway as Dean sat down at the table, clearly making an effort to hold himself together. Their conversation was still troubling Dean, Hogan could see, and he worried about what that would mean for the upcoming interrogation.

Dean hadn't been sitting down long, however, when Sam came in and made a beeline for him. "Dean? What is it?"

"Just talked to Hogan," Dean replied quietly, flicking a glance Hogan's way. "There's a Gestapo major coming to question us. About..." He gestured around the room.

"To _question_ us," Sam repeated, frowning slightly.

"Yeah."

The brothers locked eyes for a long moment.

"You good?" Dean asked.

Sam rubbed at the scar on his left palm but didn't break eye contact with Dean. "Yeah, I'll be fine. You?"

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched upward. "This ain't Van Nuys."

Evidently that meant something to Sam, because he snorted and grinned. "Dude..."

"This guy's not Michael. He's not Zach. He's not Alastair. Hell, he's not even Crowley."

"And you're not suicidal." That almost sounded more like a question than a statement for some reason.

"Sam," said Dean as he stood, "we are the guest stars on a 1960s sitcom. What the hell makes you think we're gonna die _this_ time?"

Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head as if the statement really were the evasion Hogan thought it was, but he didn't stop grinning as he started toward the door. "We'd be safer on _The A-Team_."

Dean followed. "I thought you hated that show because nobody gets killed."

Sam opened the door to let Dean out first. "I did when I was 12, but if you've got to get trapped in an action-drama, go with the live-action cartoon."

"Dude. _Sitcom_."

"Jerk."

The door slammed shut behind Sam and cut off Dean's usual reply.

Hogan blew the air out of his cheeks. That conversation hadn't been quite as reassuring as it might be. So given Hochstetter's propensity for questioning prisoners without a senior officer present, Hogan decided to at least eavesdrop—from the outer office. He didn't know exactly how he feared the interrogation might go wrong, though he doubted either brother would spill anything about Papa Bear and his merry men, but regardless, being on hand to intervene should anything get out of hand seemed like the wisest course of action.

The Winchesters hadn't been gone for more than a minute, however, when the door opened again to their voices complaining loudly over Schultz herding them inside.

"No, no, _no_," Schultz insisted. "It's too _cold _for you to be out there."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Schultz, we were just going for a walk around the compound."

"Capt. Winchester, you have been very sick. You're going to catch pneumonia if you go walking around out there in the snow."

Sam huffed. "You don't catch cold just from walking in the snow, Schultz."

Schultz shook his head, stubbornly in Papa Schultzie mode. "Please, Sgt. Winchester, maybe _you_ don't catch cold. _He _has had the flu. And if he gets pneumonia, they got to take him to the hospital, and who knows what could happen after that. It is my responsibility that nothing happens to the prisoners. So _please! Stay! Inside!_"

Dean threw up his hands. "All right, fine. We're inside."

"Thank you." Schultz took a long, bracing whiff of whatever LeBeau was cooking and sighed happily. "Ah, my little friend. What is it you are fixing today?"

LeBeau smiled. "I never know until I'm done."

"Well, whatever it is, please save me some."

LeBeau's smile widened. "Okay, Schultzie."

Schultz let himself out, and about two seconds later, both Winchesters busted out laughing.

"Dude," Sam managed. "Did he seriously just..."

Dean nodded. "I know, right?"

"When was the last time—"

"Oh, man, I don't even know. Fifth grade?"

"That one—"

"Yeah, her."

"Can you imagine..."

"... Dad?" they finished together and laughed uproariously.

Carter looked from one brother to the other, completely lost. "The last time what?"

"The last time someone treated Dean like a kid like that," Sam chuckled, wiping his eyes.

If Carter felt anything like the pang of heartsickness that hit Hogan, he didn't show it. "Oh. Well, that's Schultz for you."

Still chuckling, Dean turned the conversation back to lunch. And Hogan sighed and went back to tidying his office, trying not to dwell on the thought that that exchange had brought to mind.

Newkirk, the scrappy lad from the streets of Stepney, might not have had the happiest of childhoods, and Sam, the college boy from the back roads of America, might have tied him for horror stories. But if he hadn't been a kid since the fifth grade, Dean might well have had them both beat.

* * *

Hochstetter didn't turn up until mid-afternoon. The only indication Hogan had gotten that either Winchester was at all nervous while waiting was that after lunch, Dean had asked whether the team had any weapons that needed cleaning. The handful of pistols that were stashed around the barracks hadn't taken them long to strip and clean, as quickly and efficiently as if the brothers actually were the Air Force officers they appeared to be, and they had just finished sharpening and polishing the last of LeBeau's cooking knives when Kinch spotted Hochstetter's car driving in. They had just enough time for a lightning round of some card game Hogan didn't recognize before Schultz came in, looking worried.

"Hi, Schultz," Hogan said immediately. "What's goin' on?"

The question seemed to startle Schultz a little. "Oh, Col. Hogan. I have to take the Winchesters to the Kommandant's office, by order of Maj. Hochstetter. And... he said to tell you not to come with them."

Hogan frowned. "I'm the senior officer of this camp, Schultz."

"I know, but I have my orders."

"It'll be all right, Schultz," Dean drawled as he pushed away from the table, sounding surprisingly Texan for a Kansas boy. "I'm Sam's superior officer; maybe Hochstetter figures that's enough."

Sam was not amused.

Hogan sighed. "All right, Winchester. Name, rank, and serial number, that's all. Don't let him push you around."

"Yes, sir," they chorused and followed Schultz outside.

There was a long moment of silence after the door closed before LeBeau said, "They will not talk, _Colonel_."

"Sure." Hogan sighed. "Question is, will they survive?"

"You goin' after 'em, sir?" Carter asked.

"Yeah, but let's give it a minute, listen in first."

With that, the team trooped into Hogan's office and settled around the coffee pot, which Kinch plugged in just in time to hear Hochstetter and Klink shouting at each other. It took Hogan several seconds to work out that Hochstetter was trying to kick Klink out of the office and that Klink was using every weapon in his arsenal to try to refuse—pulling rank, threatening to call Gen. Burkhalter, and... spilling the beans about the Winchesters' fragile mental conditions. As soon as Klink said the word _Alpträume_, nightmares, a collective groan went up from the prisoners.

"Sounds like you'd better get over there, Colonel," Kinch stated.

Hogan nodded. "Yeah. If Hochstetter doesn't even want Klink in the room, he's probably got guards posted with orders not to let anybody in the building. Newkirk, Carter, diversion."

"Yes, sir," Newkirk and Carter chorused and dashed outside.

"Kinch, LeBeau, keep listening. Don't miss a word."

Hogan barely waited for them to acknowledge the order before walking quickly out of the barracks. Then he meandered casually across the compound while Newkirk and Carter started a running game of catch that led to one of the guards being "accidentally" beaned with the baseball. Hogan was already against the wall of the Kommandantur when Klink stormed out in a huff with Schultz hard on his heels, neither man seeing him or paying any attention to the commotion Newkirk and Carter were causing with the guards, so it was the work of only seconds for Hogan to jump up on the porch and slip into the outer office just as the door to the inner office was shutting. Then he crossed to the interior door silently and knelt to peer through the keyhole. He didn't want to risk the spyholes in the Himmler picture; not only was there the real danger that Hochstetter would notice this time, but also, if something went wrong, Hogan was better off being right outside the door rather than at the back of the closet. The view from the keyhole was limited, but Hogan was quickly able to find an angle that allowed him to see at least Dean's face and Hochstetter's once Hochstetter seated himself in Klink's chair. The Winchesters were already seated facing the desk; Hogan could see Sam, but not well.

Dean was wearing an expression of polite attention but minimal interest when Hochstetter began, "Now, Sgt. Winchester, it has come to my attention that certain important military information has been divulged to certain people in this camp. Tell me, have you heard anything about troop movements in East Prussia?"

Hogan frowned a little. Was this a pretext, or was the information on East Prussia legit? With Hochstetter, there was really no telling.

In any case, Sam replied flatly, "Winchester, Samuel, Sergeant, United States Army Air Force, 8675309."

"Sergeant, we already know you overheard one conversation."

"So what?" Dean interrupted. "We're prisoners. Who could he tell if he did hear anything?"

Hochstetter smiled a little. "That, Capt. Winchester, is the problem. You see, the Gestapo has been investigating your story about being shot down outside Gummersbach. The bomber crash was legitimate... but the American Air Force has no record of either of you."

Hogan's heart sank.

"So perhaps you would be so good as to tell me what you were doing near that airplane."

"We got dropped there by a demigod who was playing pranks on us. We're not even from this reality." The corner of Dean's mouth curled up in a cheeky smirk.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, see, me and my brother, we're demon hunters from the year 2012. We've been tryin' to stop these monsters called Leviathans from takin' over the world, but this Trickster, he decided we needed to pass a test before he'd think about helping us. Something went wrong, and here we are."

It was all Hogan could do to keep from laughing. When the truth was that incredible, why _not_ tell it?

Hochstetter chuckled, too, but not pleasantly. "You fancy yourself as a joker, Captain."

"I think I'm adorable."

Sam coughed.

"I would appreciate the truth," Hochstetter stated, an edge creeping into his voice.

And Dean, to his credit, returned, "Winchester, Dean, Captain, United States Army Air Force, 1121983." Hogan could sense both brothers shifting out of their air of insolence to prepare for a fight.

Hochstetter rose, leaning over the desk slightly. "Captain, I suggest you answer my question now. Otherwise, I shall take you back to Berlin with me, and there conditions will be far less pleasant. You have no idea how effective our methods can be; we will make your life a living hell until we get the information we want."

Dean stood, eyes blazing, though he made no other movement toward Hochstetter. "Let me tell you something, _Major_," he said in a low, dangerous voice. "I have been tortured before. And yes, I do have a breaking point. But what it took to reach that point? _Himmler_ would have nightmares. So go ahead. Make my day."

Only the way Hochstetter fidgeted with his belt buckle betrayed the fact that he was suddenly very glad to have a desk between him and the hot-headed American. "No," he said after a long pause and broke eye contact to look at Sam. "Perhaps I should be more creative with your brother."

Neither Sam nor Dean moved, but Sam snarled, and Hochstetter suddenly found himself dodging Klink's pencil holder.

"You touch my brother," Dean said evenly, "and I've got half a mind to let him go Dark Lord on you."

Hogan took that as his cue and forced the door open. "_Winchester!_" he barked. "Stand down!"

Though neither brother stopped glaring at Hochstetter, who was fighting a losing battle to hide his fear, Dean did sit down. Klink's pencils gathered themselves back into the holder, and the holder returned to its place on the desk.

"Major, I protest," Hogan stated loudly, pretending he hadn't seen Sam clean up his own mess without moving a muscle. "This interrogation is in violation of the Geneva Convention—and may I remind you that the Geneva Convention is as much to protect _you_ as it is to protect the rights of prisoners? Sgt. Winchester wouldn't have thrown anything at you if I'd been in here to begin with, and if I hadn't been in the outer office to overhear, they could easily have killed you."

Hochstetter straightened his jacket and cleared his throat. "Perhaps you are right, Hogan," he said quietly. "My apologies. That will be all."

The Winchesters stood in tandem and filed out, both standing ramrod straight and with expressions that promised death to anyone who stood in their way. But that air of danger dissipated once they were about ten yards away from Klink's office. There they slowed and stopped side by side, Sam looking miserable and Dean running a shaking hand over his nose and mouth as Hogan caught up to them.

"Dean..." Sam said quietly.

Dean shook his head. "It's okay, Sam. Not like you were... y'know."

"You knew."

"Yeah. I've known since Lilydale—the spoon thing. Just wasn't sure if you knew."

"I wasn't sure it was real."

Dean huffed, then clapped Sam on the shoulder. "Hey. At least it was just pencils, right?"

Sam snorted. "Yeah. And at least I missed."

Hogan cleared his throat. "Uh, fellas? Anything I need to know about?"

"No, sir," they chorused and strode back to the barracks without looking at him.

Hogan glanced over his shoulder and pretended he didn't see Hochstetter peering nervously through Klink's window at the Winchesters' retreating backs. He just followed them, not at all sure what to make of the exchange he'd just overheard or the scene he'd witnessed in the office.

And Hochstetter called _him_ the most dangerous man in Germany...

LeBeau met the brothers at the door with coffee, but no one spoke, and Hogan didn't have to do more than make eye contact with LeBeau for the Frenchman to nod and go back to the office. Hogan followed, closing the door behind him with a sigh. Then he and his team looked at each other for a moment, still processing what had happened. The coffee pot was unplugged, so the room was silent.

Finally, Carter spoke up. "What'd he throw, sir?"

Hogan sighed again. "Pencil holder. But that's not the problem. Newkirk, LeBeau, have you... noticed anything odd about Sam? Other than the hand bit, I mean."

LeBeau shifted uncomfortably. "I can't be sure, _Colonel_, but I think maybe he is... _comment se dit telécinétique_?"

"Telekinetic," Newkirk supplied, his accent thickened by concern. "I reckoned something like it meself. In a small way, sir, nothing but skill in 'is pool game or 'is darts, though 'e makes it look like 'e don't know wot 'e's doin'. But the other day, I chucked a bit of paper 'is way just to see. 'E didn't see me do it, but 'e saw it comin' towards 'im, and... it stopped. Right where it was when 'e looked at it. And then 'e picked it up with the stick, you know, like normal. I don't think 'e even knew 'e'd done it."

"He didn't," Hogan confirmed. "I think the pencil holder was an accident. But Hochstetter knows Sam didn't touch it, either to throw it or to put it back. And _that_ is what has me worried."

"How so?" LeBeau asked.

"The Krauts are losin' bad," Kinch replied quietly. "And here he's got a spy who's telekinetic—could be a real _Supermensch_. Think he's gonna let that go?"

"Yeah," Hogan agreed. "And the way they talked, Sam's capable of more than just throwing pencils. They didn't tell me what he could do or under what circumstances, but you can bet the Gestapo scientists won't stop testing him until they find out. If they're not protected by the Geneva Convention..."

Carter frowned. "Is that what Capt. Winchester meant? About letting Sam 'go Dark Lord'?"

"Yeah, and I'd hate to find out the specifics, since it sounds like the last time it happened, their world almost ended. Literally."

"But... they won't _talk_, right? I mean, after what he said..."

"Carter, those men have been to Hell. As in pitchforks and flames, the whole bit."

There was a moment of stunned silence before LeBeau asked, "Are you sure, _Colonel_?"

"It's the only thing that makes sense of what they have said, some of what they haven't said, why they seem to be looking for redemption with the demon hunting. You think I'm letting the Gestapo take another crack at 'em with _that_ stuff in their heads?"

"So how do we keep them here?" Kinch asked.

Hogan sighed again and shook his head. "I wish I knew, Kinch."

* * *

Dean was withdrawn most of the rest of the day—not unresponsive, really, but clearly not in the mood to do more than sit and think and wish he could get drunk; he politely but firmly shut down the other prisoners' attempts to check on him with a repeated "I'm fine." Sam tried not to hover, but it was hard not to worry that dealing with Hochstetter had sent Dean's mind someplace they'd both desperately tried for years to keep it from going. Even when Dean took Sam up on the offer of a nap on his bunk, he didn't actually sleep; his eyes were mostly closed, but not completely, and Sam could see that awful faraway look in them again that was starting to remind him of the Windows blue screen of death.

Fortunately, when Schultz came in to announce roll call, he took one look at Dean and put a hand on Sam's arm. "Capt. Winchester looks worse," he said quietly. "You should stay with him. I will tell the Kommandant."

Sam managed a smile. "Thanks, Schultz."

After everyone else was outside, Sam sat down on the next bunk over to keep an eye on Dean, and a good thirty seconds of silence passed. Then Dean said, "Sam. Do you know what... what Hogan said to me this morning?"

"No. What?"

"Everybody breaks." That statement hung in the air for several seconds before Dean continued shakily, "Alastair, he... he s-said Dad... had been there a hundred years, treated the same way I was, and hadn't broken. And I believed him. Dammit, I _believed_ him! Forty years and I still let him get to me."

Sam swallowed past the lump forming in his throat. "Dean."

"Hogan doesn't even know—and he said it would take a strong will to hold out for even six years. _Six_, Sammy!" Dean shook his head and tried to say something else, but whatever idea it was kept dying on his tongue, choked by the tears threatening to spill out of his eyes.

"To most people, that's a long time," Sam offered quietly.

"What I did—but what Alastair—" That thought, too, choked and died and came out as a sob. Dean never had been able to articulate what Alastair, Hell's torture-master, had done to him for those thirty years before he'd broken.

"Oh, _Dean_." Sam crossed the narrow space between bunks and pulled Dean into a tight hug, ignoring Lucifer's inane commentary on the sappiness of the moment. "I told you. It's not your fault."

"I should—but Hogan—"

"Yeah. You listen to Hogan. I mean, he ought to know, right?"

"I th-th-thought..." _I thought I was weak_, Sam understood. _I thought I failed._

"I know. I did, too, then, but hell, demon blood junkie. I'm one to talk."

"Sam..."

"It's okay, Dean. Let it go."

And by golly, he did. He was still crying silently into Sam's shoulder when the other men filed back in after roll call, but though he pulled away from Sam and hastily wiped the tears off his face, he didn't object when Sam brought him coffee and soup and stayed seated beside him on the bunk. There was comfort in touch, but there was also comfort in nearness, and Sam knew Dean needed that nearness to ground him as he finally tried to get his head around the fact that he'd been beating himself up for four years for no reason. They couldn't have the front seat of the Impala right now, or lie on her hood stargazing, but they could have this.

Shortly before lights out, Hogan came over and put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "You know," he said quietly, "if you two need some space, you're welcome to go down in the tunnel. It's not much, but there's nobody down there now; you'd have some privacy."

Dean shook his head. "No. No, thanks, Colonel, that's not... we'll be fine."

"All right. If you're sure."

Dean nodded.

So did Sam. "Thanks, Colonel."

Hogan nodded and moved away, and Dean got up and climbed into his own bunk.

"Dean..." Sam began, not getting up or looking at Dean to give him some space but still concerned.

"What," Dean replied, "you wanna use me for a teddy bear? I think the bed's too narrow for that, dude."

Sam huffed and rolled his eyes, but he couldn't help smiling. No chick flick moments. Dean had answered the question Sam hadn't asked—he'd be okay for the night, at least. "All right, forget it. Good night."

Dean dropped a hand down to tousle Sam's too-short hair. "Night, Sammy."

And they both slept tolerably well that night.

* * *

.

* * *

Translation:

I don't understand, Maj. Hochstetter. Capt. Winchester is... no, they were captured at the same time.

Yes, of course, but—yes, Major. We'll expect you.


	4. Coyote Waits

Chapter 4  
Coyote Waits

Dean woke the next morning with the memory of his last conversation with Jo echoing through his mind—not the one just before she'd died of wounds sustained by saving him from a hellhound, but the one just before she'd had to prepare to carry out Osiris' sentence. The one where she'd told him he was carrying far more guilt than he needed to, and he'd replied that it made up a good 90% of who he was.

_I get rid of that, what then?_

_You really want to die not knowing?_

He hadn't answered her then, being too tired and depressed to want anything but the release death seemed to offer. But now... now it looked like he had no choice but to find out. And as scary as it was, as hard as it was to accept that bad things had been _done to_ him... he already felt somewhat lighter for trying.

Hell, he almost wanted to buy Hochstetter a beer. Wouldn't that creep the guy's cheese, knowing that he'd been a better therapist than interrogator!

He was feeling better physically, too, now that his system was finally just about adjusted to being dried out. And so eager was he to get back into the swing of things and ditch the barracks for a few hours that he almost missed the looks Hogan and Kinch kept shooting his and Sam's way. They didn't look freaked or mad, just... worried.

Finally, after lunch, Dean dropped his spoon into his empty bowl and said, "Okay, Colonel, what'd I do?"

Hogan blinked. "Nothing."

"All right, what'd Sam do?"

Sam looked startled. "What?"

Hogan sighed. "It's not _what_ he did. It's _how_."

Sam gulped and paled as he figured out what Hogan had to be talking about. "Sir—"

Hogan held up a hand. "Save it, Winchester. I'm sure it was an accident. But Hochstetter _saw_. He wouldn't have been so scared otherwise. I don't think he'll do anything yet, but if this East Prussia business is a trap and we haven't fallen for it, I think he'll be mad enough about that and about your managing to rattle him that he'll ship you both off for tests to find out what happened and why."

Dean's hands clenched into fists almost of their own accord. "You think they'll sic someone like _Mengele_ on Sam?"

"Who?" the other prisoners chorused.

"Josef Mengele," Sam replied tightly, "the camp doctor at Auschwitz. Does a lot of human experimentation—usually without anesthesia."

Hogan frowned. "Auschwitz? That's in Poland, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I dunno, it... it might have been liberated by now, but even if it has, Mengele's still out there." Sam winced and pushed hard on his scar; Dean really didn't want to know what Lucifer was taunting him about.

Dean swore bitterly. "What do we do?"

Hogan shook his head. "I won't try to kid you, fellas. If Hochstetter can convince the right people that you're spies, even though you were captured in uniform, there may not be much we can do except arranging for your escape once you're outside the wire, and even that might not be so easy if Hochstetter keeps a lid on the camp. I'd tell you to escape now, but we can't jeopardize Klink's record, not yet. And with the Gestapo everywhere, you'd never make it."

Frustrated and heartsick, Dean pushed himself away from the table hard enough to have knocked it over had Sam not seen his move coming and braced the table. Then he paced away from the table and back. He really, really wanted to kill something right then. That beer he'd wanted to buy Hochstetter? Now he'd swap it for hemlock or a hex bag.

Sam huffed. "Too bad Hochstetter's human. Be a lot easier if we could just kill him."

"Don't tempt me," Hogan said flatly.

"How soon do you think he'll come after us?"

"Hard to say. Probably not more than a week; he's got a short fuse. Doesn't give us much time, especially on radio silence." Hogan sighed, then tapped his mug on the table as he thought. "Safest way to get you outside the wire, of course, would be to have you transferred to another camp. Once you get past Hammelburg, you could probably escape on your own, especially if we hand-pick the guards for you. Allied lines aren't too far from here, maybe 50 miles depending on which way you go; we can get you a map, try to arrange a recognition signal so you won't get busted as _German_ spies."

"Think you can pull that off?" Dean asked. It was a crazy idea, but at least it was an idea.

Hogan shrugged. "Worth a try. I'll go to work on Klink this afternoon."

But Klink, it seemed, was running scared. Hochstetter evidently hadn't appreciated having to deal with men who weren't intimidated by the Gestapo and had threatened Klink within an inch of his life if Sam and Dean left the camp for any reason, up to and including death. Hogan tried everything, but Klink wouldn't budge.

"Think we ought to try to go over Klink's head, contact Burkhalter?" Kinch asked over supper.

Hogan sighed. "I dunno. Could be risky. If Hochstetter's got the phones tapped, he'd nail us like _that_." He punctuated the statement with a snap of his fingers, which made both Winchesters jump involuntarily.

Dean was mildly disappointed that the snap didn't cause any changes, as it would have if Hogan had been Gabriel. He'd already suspected that Hogan was human, but some supernatural help would have been nice.

"Besides," Hogan continued, "I can't make too much of a fuss or _Burkhalter_ might get curious enough to order tests. Unless we could control where and by whom, that defeats the purpose." He shook his head. "No, let me think on it a while. You and Baker keep an ear on the radio, though, all right? We get any news about Poland, especially, let me know."

Kinch nodded. "Yes, sir."

Newkirk shot a glance at Dean's face and said, "Oy, Captain, I've some fabric wot needs tearin' to strips—makin' a rag quilt, y'see, to 'ide messages in. Care to 'elp?"

Dean shrugged an eyebrow. "Since there's nothin' to kill around here, sure."

Newkirk nodded once and retrieved a length of heavy wool fabric from his footlocker. Then he showed Dean how wide to cut the strips and left him to it until roll call. Dean had to confess that the process was cathartic, expending his energy on something useful... and it kept him from thinking much about how spectacularly his conversation with Sgt. Wilson, plus some of his conversation with Ness, had come back to bite him.

Nazis might be easy to kill, but that didn't make killing them simple.

* * *

Old mental habits die hard. Sam knew that as well as anyone. Right now he was having a terrible time not blaming himself for losing control of a power he hadn't even realized he actually still had, which parlayed into worrying all through breakfast that Dean was about to fall back into the trap of blaming himself for this situation when he hadn't had any way of controlling it in the first place. And since Lucifer was standing just inside Sam's peripheral vision reciting statistics about Mengele's twin experiments—statistics Sam wasn't entirely sure he'd ever researched himself—being Dean's gofer for the day seemed like a much wiser course of action than doing things that would leave him alone with too much time to think. So he asked for permission, got it, and arrived at the motor pool to discover that Dean had located a truck part that needed straightening and was currently pounding the hell out of it.

Sam had a sudden flashback to Dean taking a crowbar to the Impala after Dad's death, after Sam had said something monumentally insensitive. He couldn't even remember what he'd said, only that he'd said it because he hadn't reached the conclusion Dean had about Dad trading his own life for Dean's. Dean had taken it like a knife to the heart, and the car had paid the price.

Hoping to avoid a repeat performance, Sam waited until Dean stopped to catch his breath before walking into the workshop area. "Hey."

Dean looked up at him and smiled a little. "Hey, Sammy. You okay?"

"Yeah, just... thought..." Sam gestured vaguely before shrugging. "Need anything?"

"Besides a fifth of Jack and Hochstetter's head on a plate?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "From me. Now."

"A _map_ would be nice. Don't even know where the hell we are, other than somewhere in Germany and maybe 50 miles from the Western Front. Where would we even go, Aachen? Bastogne? Is the Battle of the Bulge over yet?"

"How should I know, Dean? European Theater was Dad's thing, not mine. I barely remember _The Longest Day_."

Dean grimaced. "Look, get with Kinch. Find out where we're headed once we escape."

"Still think we can?"

There was a deadly light in Dean's eyes as he growled, "I am _not_ letting _Mengele_ get his hooks into you, Sam, or any other freak Nazi so-called scientist."

"So-called?"

"Gandalf was right. 'He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'"

Sam didn't know whether to be impressed or baffled that Dean could quote _Lord of the Rings_ without blinking that way. That line hadn't even been in the movie.

"Hogan's got a point about needing to get out of this area first," Dean continued. "But as soon as we're clear, we are makin' a break for it, and right now, I don't even _care_ who we have to kill. Well, not Schultz," he amended.

Sam huffed. "So, map."

"Map."

"Okay. But I'm supposed to work here with you for now. So..."

Dean flung a greasy rag at him and pointed to a bench. "The bearings on those brakes need the grease repacked."

"Dean..."

"Dude, you're my helper. Go help." Somehow the situation managed to bring a twinkle back to Dean's eyes.

Sam rolled his own eyes again and got to work.

* * *

Several tense but uneventful days followed, during which Kinch and Baker were able to receive enough broadcasts to nail down where the Allied lines to the west were. Sam and Dean both worked with Kinch to work out escape routes from any road on which the SS could possibly take them out of the Hammelburg area, and Hogan tried to come up with a plan for overpowering the guards and/or setting up an Underground ambush.

The plan hadn't quite fully materialized before Baker climbed up into Barracks 2 from the radio room calling for Hogan. Once the team was assembled, Baker reported, "I just got word through the BBC. The Red Army took Memel on Sunday when the Germans pulled back toward Königsberg, and one of the Russian units coming up from the south to reinforce Memel just about tripped over an SS unit that was parked a few miles northeast of Skaudvilé."

Hogan frowned. "Tripped. So the information was legit?"

"Yes and no. The Russians caught the Germans napping because the Germans were facing the wrong way—toward the way a unit would have had to come out of either Memel or Riga to stop a counteroffensive. Not too well hidden from the south, but anyone coming from the northeast or northwest wouldn't have seen a thing until it was too late."

"So if we had gotten that message out..."

"We would have sent the Russians _into_ the ambush," Kinch finished gravely.

A collective sigh went up from the group.

"All right," Hogan said, "we'll work with what we have. Hochstetter could be here any minute. Baker, any chance of getting word to the Underground?"

Baker shook his head. "No, sir. Even with the transmitter off, there was interference in the signal that sounded like a radio detector. And when I checked the phones yesterday, I heard some clicks that could have been a wire tap."

"Oh, great. All right, Winchesters, as soon as you escape, make your way to the barn here." Hogan pointed to a spot on the map that was on the far side of Hammelburg. "There's a shortwave set hidden in the hayloft. As soon as you get there, send a signal on the emergency wavelength—that's 530. Start and end your message with the code W2." Hogan rapped the Morse code lightly on the table: one short, two long, space, two short, three long. "You can put anything else you want in between; in fact, it might be better if it's not actually Morse code."

"How's this?" Dean replied and tapped out the rhythm to the opening riff of "Smoke on the Water" with a pencil.

Baker's eyebrows shot up, but Kinch nodded. "Sounds almost like U-C-U-A, but it's just syncopated enough to throw the Germans off."

"Or this?" Dean tapped out the opening riff of "Back in Black."

"Could you repeat that?" Dean did so, and Kinch jotted down _T-S-S T-I-I T-S-S A-A-A-A-I_. "Yeah. Either of those could work. Try one more, just to be on the safe side."

Dean twiddled the pencil loosely between his fingers as he thought, then rapped out the opening of "Eye of the Tiger."

"No, there's one dash you're holdin' too long to be Morse code. Try something else."

Dean responded with the first verse of "Walk Like an Egyptian."

"Needs more cowbell," Sam deadpanned.

Dean threw the pencil at him.

Kinch chuckled. "I think the first part before the repeat should be enough. You don't want the Germans to get a fix on your signal."

Dean nodded. "Gotcha."

"What are those patterns?" Hogan asked.

"Music from our day. First one's 'Smoke on the Water,' second's 'Back in Black,' and the third's 'Walk Like an Egyptian.'"

"All right. Make sure it's one of those three patterns. After you send that message, shut off the radio and sit tight until someone comes for you. The recognition signal will be the name of the pattern you sent. It might be a few days, but the people who own the farm won't come looking for you if any of their food starts to disappear. You'll be safe there."

Both brothers nodded their understanding.

"Now, there's a chance Hochstetter's going to want handcuffs on you, maybe even chains. Can you get out of them?"

Dean shrugged. "Got a paper clip?"

Hogan grinned, got one from his locker, and tossed it to Dean, who caught it easily and slipped it onto the top of his sock.

"So," Sam reviewed, "ditch the Germans, head for the barn, radio back—W2, one of those songs, W2—hang up and wait. Someone will show up, name the song, and tell us where to go next."

Hogan nodded. "That's it. Unless I've forgotten something."

No one knew of anything, so they all settled in to wait with a rousing game of gin.

They didn't have to wait more than a few hours before a truckload of Gestapo drove into camp. A very anxious Schultz came to collect the Winchesters, who followed without protest.

But halfway across the compound, Dean said, "Hey, Schultz, hold up a sec."

Schultz stopped but looked around nervously. "Please, Capt. Winchester..."

"Schultz, it's okay. It's just that... well, we think Hochstetter's gonna have us transferred, and we might not get another chance to talk, so... thanks."

"For everything," Sam added.

Schultz looked ready to cry. "You boys... you will take care of yourselves, _ja_?"

"We promise."

Schultz nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

They got as far as the front steps before Klink and Hochstetter came out on the porch and Klink ordered Schultz back to Barracks 2 to make sure the other prisoners didn't start a riot. Schultz obeyed, and the stone-faced Gestapo men closed in around Sam and Dean. With the Winchesters thus outnumbered, Hochstetter was back to his usual smirking, smug self, but Sam completely tuned out the little man's monologue until he ordered Sam and Dean searched.

Dean endured the patdown in his usual manner, not even reacting when the goon confiscated the paper clip on his sock. But then the goon got a little overly thorough, which earned him a vicious kick in the face.

"Hands off," Dean growled as two other goons held him back from following up the kick. "We don't swing that way, you sick—"

"_Silence!_" Hochstetter shouted.

And only a few seconds after that, the goon searching Sam brushed past just exactly the wrong point—and the world dissolved in light and fire and screams and Lucifer's tainted glory and diabolical laughter, too close, too anxious for the wrong kind of fun. Sam lashed out blindly with everything he had. For a too-brief moment, he felt Dean's back pressed against his, and it grounded him somewhat—brothers against the world, forever and always—but then hands pulled them apart and there were fire and ice and chains and screams and Sam could barely hear his own voice screaming in Latin and Enochian...

Then a shock of pain shot through his left hand, and the world resolved itself into Dean staring at him intently and cold German air that burned his lungs like ice as he gulped it down in harsh pants. His vision swam again, but Dean didn't let go, and his eyes focused again on Dean, Dean, brother, best friend, stone number one. Real.

"Sam."

Sam nodded once.

"You with me?"

Two nods.

"You okay?"

Two nods, and Sam chanced a look around. They were shackled together, he and Dean, hand and foot, and they were standing next to a truck with its tires blown out, and leading back to Klink's office was a trail of Gestapo men—dead or unconscious, Sam couldn't tell.

"_Sam_."

Sam looked back at Dean. "Did... did I..."

"No one who matters."

Sam nodded and breathed a little easier. Then he remembered that of course, Schultz had been sent back to guard Barracks 2, and Klink would have run for cover as soon as things started to get wild. He glanced over at the barracks and saw Hogan looking out the window at them in concern; Hogan relaxed a little and nodded once when Sam made eye contact with him, but he didn't look any less worried.

Dean was still pushing on Sam's scar, so Sam let his hand curl around Dean's thumb as he made eye contact again. "I'm sorry, Dean," he whispered.

Dean stopped pressing then but let his fingers curl gently around the back of Sam's hand. "Hey. Not your fault. I told these—"

"_Kein Gespräch_," snapped a Gestapo thug with a machine gun who nevertheless made no move to separate the brothers. Apparently he was too glad to have the wild man tamed and too eager not to suffer the same fate as his comrades.

Dean gave Sam's hand a quick squeeze and raised his eyebrows—_You good? You want to let go now, Samantha?_

No, Sam wasn't good yet; he couldn't be sure he wasn't going to lose his grip again. He tightened his hold on Dean's thumb and willed himself not to cry. Something in Dean's eyes softened then, and he tightened his own hold on Sam.

They hadn't been standing like that long before another truck drove up and the Germans herded them into it. Dean kept an eye out the back as they drove away from the camp, marking the direction they were headed and trying to decide where they could escape, if only by falling out of the truck. But Sam was in no fit state to do any such plotting; he was having a hard enough time letting the pressure of Dean's hand and the jolts from the truck on the uneven road keep him grounded.

Then, after they'd been on the road about five minutes, the truck hit a sudden bump, shooting the brothers a good two inches off the seat...

... and when they came down again, it was into the front seat of the Impala, which they were driving along some sort of track. A hundred yards or so ahead stood another, newer car and a camera crew. Their chains were gone, they saw upon looking around wildly, and their hair and clothes and everything were back to normal.

_Of course, there's really only one way to test whether or not this new Impala is as good a car as the classic Impala of forty years ago_, said a British tenor voice-over, _and that is to let the two go head to head. The trouble is finding a classic Impala in good enough condition. We actually had to bring one all the way from America. It's a fully-restored Impala from 1967, and its owners are renowned ghost hunters Dean and Sam Winchester_.

Dean had at this point reached what looked like the start line and parked, and after exchanging a look, he and Sam got out and walked toward the cameras warily.

"Dean, is it?" asked the same voice, which belonged to a short man with light brown hair and an eager smile who turned from his place in front of the cameras and walked toward Dean.

Dean cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. This is my brother Sam."

"Excellent. Richard Hammond. Thanks for coming." Hammond shook hands with each brother in turn before turning an expert's eye to the Impala. "_Beautiful_ car, this!"

Sam quickly lost interest as Dean got caught up in car talk with Hammond and set about cautiously and surreptitiously making sure that things were at least not the product of his own mind, and it seemed that they were real enough to be reliable for the moment. But Dean called him back to discuss the upcoming test—Sam, who insisted that he was fine, would drive for the quarter-mile drag race, and Dean would drive for the short lap of the track. Dean was adamant that he would not relinquish his long-lost baby to _Top Gear_'s "tame racing driver," and Hammond didn't push the issue.

It wasn't until Sam was about to hand the keys back to Dean after the drag race that the brothers happened to glance over at the production office trailer just as a tall middle-aged man with thinning curly brown hair was coming out. Something flashed across his face—it might have been astonishment; it might have been something else—followed by an utterly devious grin.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look and a sigh. The Trickster had found them again.

* * *

"Newkirk?" Hogan asked quietly as the gates closed behind the departing truck and Schultz headed back to Klink's office. "How easy will it be for the Winchesters to get out of those chains?"

"Why don't we ask Malcolm the Marvelous?" Newkirk shot back bitterly, referring to the escape artist who'd nearly fouled up an important assignment.

"Newkirk..."

"They got Dean's paper clip, sir. That's why 'e shook 'is 'ead when 'e looked over 'ere. And besides that, 'e's got Sam to look after. If those lads escape on their own while that truck's movin', it'll be a bloody miracle."

Hogan sighed heavily. "All right. We need to figure out where they're taking the boys and then find a way to spring 'em. If anybody comes up with any good ideas, I'll be in my office."

There were affirmative murmurs all around, and Hogan made his way back into his office and plugged in the coffee pot just in case anyone on the other end said anything useful.

He was still listening to Klink arguing with Hochstetter and stewing over how to rescue the Winchesters when the phone in Klink's office rang. Hochstetter answered, listened, and exploded, "_WAS? Was meinen Sie, sie sind verschwunden? ... In _Luft_ aufgelöst? Unsinn! Sie haben einfach nur entfliehen! Und _Sie_ müssen dafür bezahlen! _... BAAAAAAH!"

Hogan slumped in relief, letting his head fall forward into his hands.

Carter came to the door at just that moment. "Sir, what if—Colonel? Are you okay?"

Hogan took a deep breath, sat up, and unplugged the coffee pot with a smile. "Yeah, Carter. We can call off the rescue mission. They've gone home."

"Gone home? As in..."

"Disappeared right out of the back of the truck—vanished literally into thin air."

Carter lit up like a Christmas tree and ran back into the main room to tell the others. And Hogan breathed a silent prayer that whatever was waiting for the Winchesters back in their own world wouldn't be the death of them yet again.

* * *

After Hogan and his team went to New Zealand in 1999, he and Kinch renewed an old habit of calling each other once a month to keep tabs on each other, reminisce, and grouse about Kids These Days like the grumpy old men they pretended they weren't. They kept it up through two moves and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and of Carter's death in 2003, though most conversations were more pleasant than those periods. However, one such call in the summer of 2005 took an unexpected turn.

"Sir?" Kinch said suddenly. "Do you get a channel called WB?"

Hogan frowned. "Yeah, why?"

"Switch over. There's this commercial... I think I'm seeing things."

Hogan turned on the TV, found the channel—and blinked at the image on his screen. There, smaller than life and quite a lot younger, were Sam and Dean Winchester.

_"Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica... whatever you want to say, you can say in front of her."_

_ "Dad's on a hunting trip, and he hasn't been home in a few days."_

_ "Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside."_

"Ho-ly cats," said Kinch when the commercial was over.

"Yeah," Hogan agreed. "Looks like we've got a new show to watch, Kinch."

"Yes, sir," Kinch replied, as if it had been an order.

* * *

.

* * *

Kein Gespräch – No talking

Hochstetter's dialogue: WHAT? What do you mean, they disappeared? ... Vanished into _thin air_? Nonsense! They simply escaped! And _you_ will have to pay for it!

* * *

A/N: Yes, the Trickster is Jeremy Clarkson. I couldn't resist. ;) For those who don't know, _Top Gear_ is a very funny but very informative ("factual!") BBC car show. _Coyote Waits_ is a mystery novel by Tony Hillerman.


End file.
